


Hands

by keeptheearthbelow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1416826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeptheearthbelow/pseuds/keeptheearthbelow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An incident in their home reveals to Katniss that the state of equilibrium she and Peeta have reached is more fragile than she thought. Takes place several years post-MJ. Written for the Prompts in Panem challenge "The Language of Flowers" for peach blossom = "I am your captive" and hazel = reconciliation. Tagged for accidental harm, mention of abuse, and novice attempt at writing smut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part 1

We still have bad days — we'll never be completely right, though sometimes I remind myself that probably nobody is — but really we've both been keeping our mental balance incredibly well for probably a few years now. It's hard to admit that it took so long, and it's hard to admit that it's been so long. If I'm being honest about it, I can admit that I've come to expect good days, not bad ones. Peeta and I rarely worry about each other when we're apart during the day.

I never get a proper explanation of what was going on at the bakery when Peeta ends up with a skewer in his arm. He hired some energetic kids to do morning deliveries before school hours and they may have been goofing around, or somebody just tripped or something, but all I ever hear is a bunch of apologies and Peeta's reassurances that it was a complete accident. But he ends up with a thin pastry skewer on a shallow angle into his arm right near where they inserted the arena trackers into us. I have a mass of keloid tissue in the spot, myself. Peeta's tracker was removed neatly by the Capitol, without even a scar, though the needle marks in the crooks of his elbows are permanent. What I hear after I come back from the woods is that he spent half an hour bleeding and barely containing whatever he was seeing before he came back enough for somebody to lay a hand on him and walk him over to the clinic to have it pulled out without further damage. 

He hardly speaks the next couple of days, to me or anybody else, and as best I can tell (I shamelessly invent errands in town instead of going hunting), he's having flashbacks at least every couple of hours, short and not terribly remarkable except for their frequency. 

They seem to quiet down by supper the following day, though, because the evening passes normally at our house. He's talking again, a little tiredly, but he sounds okay. In fact we sit up late in the kitchen, catching up a bit, with mugs of dried peach-blossom tea steaming in the cool fall evening. I decide to ask what I was thinking I should ask anyway, whether he thinks this is something to run by Dr. Aurelius.

He shrugs, having obviously been thinking about it too. “It seemed worse than usual, but not really different. It doesn't seem worth a special call. To me, at least.”

“Me either,” I tell him. “I would have said differently earlier today, but you seem like you've got your balance back now.” I don't know why we started phrasing it as a matter of balance, but we do, for both of us. It seems less blameful than talking about not being able to think straight, or to tell the difference between reality and nightmares, or to recognize that a significant part of life is good.

“I'll tell him next time, though.” 

“You can tell him if you want,” I say, because I want to be clear I'm not prodding him.

He smiles at me and reaches for my hand, wrapping it up in both of his. We're on opposite sides of the tall kitchen bar, Peeta properly in the kitchen, me perched on a high stool on the other side. “I'll tell you something,” he says.

“Bet I know what,” I say, smiling back, because he has a goofy grin that usually goes along with telling me he loves me.

The flashback hits so fast I don't even see it coming. I'm so startled I knock my mug over. I try to pull my hand away, but it's too late, his fingers have locked around my wrist and hand. Scalding tea pools around our hands. I hiss in pain and try to pry at his fingers — I've had to do this a couple times, during long ones, and half the time he comes out of it before I've even worked his fingers apart. But this time he recoils at the touch and drags me further forward across the bar. My stool tilts and falls out from under me and I'm left balancing on the very tips of my toes, rib cage jammed against the edge of the counter, and the sudden crash of the stool makes Peeta tighten his grip again. This is all impressively painful. I need to get over the counter somehow, or around it, and I'm trying to see what I can get a hold of with my free hand and my toes when something escalates in Peeta's brain and I feel a bone in my hand snap. 

I cry out and pull reflexively and now there goes a knuckle. My toes have lost any purchase on the floor. Peeta has got my hand clenched into his chest, hunched over with his head tucked down, his breathing sounding like he's choking. There's nothing to get a grip on with my toes or my knees, and the far edge of the counter is not quite within reach of my fingertips. And it hurts so much it's blinding to try to pull against his hold.

_Half an hour_ , I think. In the bakery the other day he came to in half an hour. I swallow and try to work some of my weight onto my free arm and try to hang on. 

Sooner than I dared hope, I can tell by his breathing that he's coming back. And maybe he recognizes something of what's happening, because his fingers spasm open before he's even picked up his head. All I can do is fall off the counter, the edge scraping up my ribs and breasts and barely missing my chin. I'm lucky to stumble and then land on my backside instead of my head. My arms are numb.

“Katniss,” he's trying to say. I hear a thump and then a sloughing sound, as though he's backed into a cabinet and slid down to the floor.

“Just stay there,” I whimper. I direct my good hand, my right hand, around by dint of memory, because it feels like I have a stuffed sock attached to my shoulder. I let the bad hand hang wherever it is. I get to my feet and go into the study and poke at the buttons for Haymitch's number.

He has left his telephone intact for years now, and he admitted once to Peeta that he realized if we ever needed help it would be good to be able to reach him without running across the green. 

“Haymitch,” I say, when he slurs an answer, and it's only then I realize I'm crying. “Please come stay with Peeta.”

I barely hear him say “Yep” before he's crashed the phone back down. 

I wobble back into the kitchen and to the door and step into a pair of shoes. The light is too bright. Peeta is sitting on the floor gasping. I'm not even sure if he's here or not. I'm about to try to say something to him when Haymitch comes in the door. His eyes go to my face, look around for Peeta, come back to me and the way I'm holding my arm. I see his face tighten. But he's still capable of rolling with anything. “You okay getting to the doctor by yourself?”

I nod. It's dark, it's late, and I will probably not meet anyone, and that is really all I want right now. That and some way of preventing Peeta from being too hard on himself.

I get the solitude I hope for as I trot down the hill and into town. Lissa Ibins is our doctor, the first real doctor Twelve has had in living memory, originally from District Six. She's older than me; they've always had decent educations in Six. She lives next to the clinic so that people can pound on her door in the middle of the night if they need to.

She doesn't really ask me any questions at first, just belts her robe and takes me into the room with all the scanning machines and helps me position my arm in one of them. After moving it around and getting my reactions, she says, “This resembles a compression injury, is that correct?” And when I nod, she says, “Compressed by what? It would help to know.”

“Hands,” I stammer.

She nods and tells me this is going to hurt and asks if I want a painkiller. I tell her no. I've been to see her before with a sprained ankle and the like, and I've already been told there's nothing strong enough that isn't addictive. So she has me take fever reducers, and I brace myself in a corner before setting the bones in my hand.

I sit with my head on my knees, trembling and nauseated, while she does the injection for bone healing and puts on a balm for the slight burn and wraps me up in a splint, elbow to fingertips. I let her sit me up and prod me all over to assure herself that there's nothing else broken. My ribs are bruised a bit but once I pull up my shirt to show her she decides they'll heal on their own. My shoulder aches and we have a little conversation about the position it was in and she decides to give me a sling. She's showing me how to fasten it when we hear two sets of heavy footsteps enter the front room. She frowns and says, “Wait here,” but I already know who it is.

I stay put for the time being because I'm trying to still the shakiness. I listen to Dr. Ibins saying, “I'm with another patient at the moment, but I can see you shortly.” 

I can't hear if Peeta says anything in response, but Haymitch says clearly, “Like it's a big mystery who that is. Can you at least tell him if she's all right?”

So I go out to the front room. Peeta is slumped in one of the waiting-area chairs, looking devastated. Dr. Ibins and Haymitch both reach as if to stop me, but I just go straight to Peeta and climb into his lap. He makes as if to stop me too, but I snarl, “Shut up. Stop it. It isn't your fault.” And I wrap my good arm around his neck and bury my face in his shoulder. I leave my splinted arm resting on my leg. I need him to have no doubt about how I feel about him, and if that means straddling him in front of other people then so be it.

His doubts can never be fixed easily — and right now he seems like he's trying not to touch me, shying away from me even though I'm on top of him in the chair. He's holding his hands away from me. “You're crazy,” he gasps, “Katniss, don't.”

“Get used to it,” I say into his shoulder.

“I broke your arm,” he says bleakly, with his head pressed back against the wall. “Didn't I?”

“My hand,” I correct him. “Couple of fingers.”

I can feel him flinch. “We need to rethink this.”

“Rethink what?”

“Me living with you.”

I pull back then. Oh, so this is the conversation we're having. “Absolutely not. We already thought this through a lot.” I'm still feeling nauseated and my voice is maybe sharper than I'd choose for it to be.

He responds angrily, the kind of anger that covers up guilt and fear. “Years ago. We were eighteen. We wanted to think this would work.”

“This does work.”

“ _I just broke your arm_.”

“My hand. And did you mean to?” I snap.

“No! Damn it! Are you kidding me?!”

“See.” I make to put my head back on his shoulder. 

He pushes me away. “This is not okay! What the hell do you think I think of that argument, oh, nobody _meant_ to hurt you, really they love you, they weren't themselves, it's just a slip-up?”

I can feel my mouth fall open. 

He doesn't talk about this. I mean, he has a couple of times, including when we moved in together. It's a shock to realize it's something that lingers so readily in his mind, that it's more than a memory. 

It takes me a couple tries to say, feebly, “Peeta, it isn't the same.”

He shakes his head. “It isn't. But it's got all the same lines attached.”

I don't even know what to say. I have the impression Haymitch and Dr. Ibins are exchanging dark looks in the background. 

I've leaned back on his thighs a bit and he winces and says, “Can you not —” He sounds normal, like all the other times I've accidentally sat on the seam between natural and artificial leg, so I automatically scoot forward, my hips flush against him. But he looks just as uncomfortable and he still won't touch me. I could get off him, but I don't. We've got nothing to fear from each other.

Before I can even fumble for words, Peeta says, “You're going to tell me this was a fluke. That I've never done anything like this since the war. That you've gotten your hands out of mine before. I know you have, I can usually tell what's going on around me,” he adds, to my surprised look. “But what I'm going to tell you is that maybe the good years were the fluke.”

We sit there and stare at each other. He's serious. 

My lower lip starts to tremble. “I think you're jumping to conclusions.”

But he is getting tears in his eyes. “I don't want to put you at risk.”

I hang my head. Why is he forgetting — or discounting — the danger I'm in _without_ him to rely on? The fact that I need him, that I want him? Has he decided he can live without me?

He lets out a short laugh suddenly, completely out of place. “Tell you this much, I'll never ask you about having kids again.”

I stare at him, aghast. “How can you even —” This is finally enough to propel me off his lap. “How can you — that isn't fair!”

In front of other people, too. I want to sink into the floor and disappear.

He's just still sprawled in the chair. “A lot of things aren't fair.”

I rock on my feet and pace out a tiny circle and something is snapping inside me the way little bones did earlier. “You should let Dr. Ibins check on your arm and then we're going home.”

He shrugs. Dr. Ibins looks at Haymitch again and then disappears into the back room and brings some gauze and balm out to Peeta. I don't know if she wouldn't feel safe taking him to an exam room or if she is trying to keep the whole situation as static as possible. He lets her bandage up the days-old puncture wound, which reopened sometime during this whole thing, and I can't help feeling that's a minor victory. Haymitch stands there with his arms folded the entire time. 

Then Peeta says quietly to her, “You and I have talked a couple times about sedatives.” I freeze. 

She looks at him. “Are you asking for some now?”

He nods. She sighs — I think part of the reason that I actually like Dr. Ibins is that she doesn't talk much — and takes his pulse and has him follow her finger with his eyes for some reason, and then she goes away again and comes back with a single pill in a bottle. “You both come see me in the morning. Doesn't have to be together.” He nods again and gets to his feet.

Haymitch escorts us home and follows us into the kitchen. The light is still on, there's cold tea across the countertop, and the stool is lying on the floor. You'd never know that it's my entire life that's threatening to fall apart. The adrenaline is worn off and my hand is throbbing in time to my heartbeat and feels ten times its actual size. I right the stool and then just stand there.

Haymitch says, “Do you want me to stay here?”

He isn't talking to me. He's talking to Peeta. Who nods. “Thank you. I'll make up the spare room for you.”

“The sofa's fine, kid.”

“Well, I'll be doing a room for myself too.”

“No you won't,” I interrupt. 

Peeta just looks at me sorrowfully, like it's too bad how misinformed I am.

“You're not doing anything that's going to be that hard to come back from. If I'm sleeping in our bed, so are you.” 

He looks like he wants to argue, maybe, except that he's looking at the floor and I know he doesn't really want to sleep away from me. I feel a little crazed. It must be the pain.

“What are you having a sedative and a houseguest for if not so you can stay with her?” Haymitch mutters to the wall.

Peeta makes a defeated noise. “Fine.” 

Haymitch plants himself on the sofa, Peeta wipes up the spilled tea, and I wait until he'll come upstairs with me so he can't chicken out. But I get into bed first and prop my arm carefully and then I'm asleep before he comes to bed. I don't even know if he takes the pill — he's gone when I get up. Haymitch, poking around the kitchen and looking shocked at the presence of so much fresh food, tells me Peeta went to open the bakery like normal.

So this is what we do — hang on to the routines, the shells of our lives, with absolutely nothing on the inside. We talk a little over supper, about the weather. We sleep in the same bed. Peeta never touches me except to help with the sling if I ask, and he moves away if I touch him.

We've had bad times before, times when we're both off balance. This hurts more.


	2. part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That’s the way of it, take something away from me and I realize I want it after all.” Katniss tries to bridge the rift between them and allay Peeta’s concerns.

So this is what we do — hang on to the routines, the shells of our lives, with absolutely nothing on the inside. We talk a little over supper, about the weather. We sleep in the same bed. Peeta never touches me except to help with the sling if I ask, and he moves away if I touch him.

We've had bad times before, times when we're both off balance. This hurts more.

When I turn up in public in a splint, we both get a lot of sidelong stares on the street. I thought this ended years ago. _Maybe he's right_ , I think miserably, _maybe some things only go into remission_. 

But the high-frequency flashbacks taper off, back to a normal level, without any further medical intervention. And I can return the sling to the clinic after a week. 

I can't use a bow, but I go out anyway to set snares and gather late berries and roots. I sing, too, because I need to get it all out somehow, because I don't want it to weigh me down and make it impossible to get out of bed in the mornings.

Two weeks later, he comes home a little late one evening and says, “Can I talk to you?”

I finish writing the date on a package of rabbit that I had to take to the butcher instead of doing it myself. “Anytime.”

He opens the freezer door for me, closes it after I find a place for the rabbit. “I want us to work.”

The bluntness is a little startling. “Good. So do I.”

“I know I'm not being great to you right now. Frankly, I'm terrified of hurting you again.”

It's nice of him to admit it, I guess. “I get it.”

He stares out the window, at the darkness. “The thing is, you can choose this. You can choose to stay with me, to deal with the risks.”

I don't know where he's going with this. Is he looking for confirmation I want to stay with him? I just said I did.

He continues, “But … this is what I need to say to you, even though I brought it up all wrong before. That I see, now, that I need to accept that it would be wrong to have kids. Because children wouldn't be able to protect themselves, and they wouldn't get to make that choice, or be able to weigh the risks. And I would be a serious risk.” He swallows hard. “I really wanted to think it would be okay. That the world is okay now, that we aren't too screwed up. But I didn't look hard enough at myself. So now I have, and now I need to try to let that go.”

There's a feeling like a stone in the pit of my stomach.

He looks at me sadly. “I went to see Dr. Ibins this afternoon —”

I make a protesting noise without even knowing why.

He pauses, but I've got nothing to say so he moves on. “Just to talk. See if there are options. Which there are — you can have an injection. It just blocks up the system, has no other effects on your life other than removes the possibility of fathering children.” He speaks calmly, quietly. “So I wanted to tell you about this. It seems like a good idea.”

This frantic feeling is something I thought I'd left behind in a jungle, or in a bunker. I try to swallow. I can't figure out which of the thoughts buzzing through my mind is right to say. “It sounds like you might want me again someday.”

He lets out a surprised huff that should have been a laugh. “I always want you. Except for how I'm terrified to touch you.”

I bite my lips. “Then let me — will you let me —” 

I don't know what I'm asking him to let me do, and he clearly doesn't know either, because he seems petrified as I reach out a hand to him. We've already had to go through all this horrible effort of trying to accept each other, I think, remembering a room in the tunnels underneath the Capitol, a moment of rest on the run. Why do we have to do it yet again? I press my palm over his heart and keep it there for a long time. Smooth across his shoulder and reach to touch the back of his hand where he's holding tight to the edge of the kitchen counter. I rest the backs of my fingers against the backs of his. 

“Wait,” I ask him. “Would you just wait? Till we can talk again?”

He says okay.

It's not like we're running any risk of procreating, anyway, these days. But after that conversation he shies away from me less. Like the bad old days, I briefly touch his shoulders or arms and give him time to get used to me. When for the first time he leans down to kiss the top of my head, I feel like I've been given the world on a silver platter. You act like a teenage girl _now_? I reprimand myself.

I miss his hands so badly, though. In my hair, fingers twined through mine, on the back of my neck, slipping over my body and beneath my clothes. Reaching for me. Broader and warmer than mine are. I've always liked to watch his hands. I find myself thinking about his hands in the middle of doing other things, to the point of complete distraction. That's the way of it, take something away from me and I realize I want it after all.

I sit down on a fallen tree in the woods and make some decisions. When I go back into town and stop by the bakery to drop off a bucket of hazelnuts, I curl a finger through his belt loop and tug him toward me a little, just for a moment and not when anybody else can see, because I know that's a way to let him know what I'm thinking about.

He comes home earlier that evening, which I take to be reason enough to feel a flutter of hope on top of everything else I'm feeling. I've had my bath already and I felt silly as I went around in my nightgown and closed all the curtains, but now he's here and puttering in the kitchen. 

“What do you want for supper?” he asks.

“Could I have a kiss?” I suggest.

He turns around, and he's smiling, but he looks awkward as he comes to me. Gently, he says, “I don't know if this is a good idea.”

“I want you,” I tell him.

It's been a long wait since the last time. And we're already standing so close together that the air gets charged easily. He leans down to me. Hesitates. Then kisses me.

I return it happily until I realize he's still not touching me. He's actually kissing me with his hands clasped behind him like an overly disciplined little kid. I break off the kiss because I can't help laughing at him, and he laughs too, though he's looking defensive.

“If you don't want to do this yet, tell me, but please don't get weird about it,” I say to him.

The idea strikes me — finally — while I'm waiting for him to respond. I tug on his arm until he lets me have his hand, and I hold it delicately and slowly kiss each fingertip, his wrist, the center of his palm, the webs between his fingers. His skin smells like hazelnuts and sugar and I can't stop myself from pulling his fingers into my mouth to taste them. I hear his breath catch and I look up at him. His mouth is slightly open. 

I reach for his other hand — no resistance this time — and clasp it to my collarbone. We both let his hand slip, as if it's an accident, to my breast. I moan around his fingertips and I hear him answer me.

Three seconds later he has walked me back against the kitchen table and hitched me up to sit on it. He drops to his knees in front of me. I stop him as he pushes up my nightgown to reach for my underwear.

Before he can voice the apology that's already on his face, I say, “Use your hands. Only your hands.”

He looks surprised. We aren't in the habit of making up rules for each other. But this — well, what I want is his hands.

I finish pulling off my underwear and let them fall to the floor.

He watches them drop, then stands up. His hands hesitate on my thighs before they pull the nightgown off me. He groans a little in the back of his throat, looking at my body. I'm wearing nothing but the splint on my hand. When our eyes meet again I take one of his hands and guide it between my legs. He presses his forehead against mine, but I won't let him kiss me — I pull his other hand back up to my mouth. He slides his thumb against me, finding heat and wetness. Then a finger, then in, then two. I sigh inadvertently. So does he. I suck on his fingers and feel his other hand slide inside me more fully, more eagerly.

I am nowhere near close to getting enough of this when he draws back a little. Enough to look at me, look at his hands. He presses them gently into me once, and then takes his hands away entirely, leaving me empty. 

I whimper, “Don't tell me you're stopping now.”

He shakes his head, but I can't exactly tell what he's thinking, in part because his eyes have gone dark with desire. He takes what he surely thinks is a risk of running both his hands all over me — feet to collarbone and back down, trailing a bit of wetness around — before he cradles the back of my head and lays me down on the table. He bends over me, ignoring my rules to press open-mouthed kisses to the skin of my stomach. Only then does he press his fingers back into me, slowly.

This is the thing about sleeping with a man who makes bread for a living, whose hands are powerful, attentive, and capable of seemingly endless motion. He moves in ways we both know, retracing the feel of me, providing a rhythm, pressing the heel of his hand against me. I can't help groaning as I look down at the flex of his shoulder. His other hand braces me at the nape of my neck, and I let my head fall back and surrender my whole body to the feel of his hands.

I'm still trying to settle my breathing after when I hear the scrape of a chair on the floor right beneath me. I open my eyes to find that he has had a seat here at the table and is looking at me as though I'm a really extravagant cake. Maybe to him I'm not so different. His left hand fiddles with my braid and his right hand is still resting on the inside of my thigh. He reaches a finger to touch me and I shudder in reaction. He smiles. 

“Why do we end up on the kitchen table?” I murmur. “It's not hygienic.”

“It's a good height,” he murmurs back. “For me.”

At the thought of that particular proportion, and since my hand closer to him isn't in a splint, I reach for him and slide my hand down his front. 

He stops me. “I'm good for now.”

I giggle, out of nowhere. “Yeah, you are good.”

Oh, how easy it is to come back together, as if we'd never had distance between us. I love being with him. It's _fun_. It feels like it means something.

I'm thinking like it isn't the bad times.

“I wanted to tell you something,” I murmur.

“I've been listening to you,” he replies, cheekily. 

_You have his hands back on you_ , I tell myself, _now tell him_. 

“I don't want you to let me go,” I say before I can think too hard about it. “I don't want this to be a one-off. I love your hands,” I try to explain, meeting his eyes. “They hold me steady. They're beautiful. I want you to touch me. Please don't let me go.”

After a minute, he says, “I won't. I won't.”

We look at each other. No kissing. Just looking to be sure we mean it. 

“Okay,” I say. “And I want to tell you this too. I've had a lot of decisions made for me in my life. Sometimes before I'm ready. And I don't think you should go get that injection.”

He wasn't expecting this. His hands draw away from me a little bit.

“I mean it. I think about it sometimes, what we could do if we wanted. I don't want it now, but I've thought about it. Please — please. I don't want to not have the choice. You can ask me again sometime.”

He looks at me seriously for a long time. His hands stay on me, but they tremble. “Okay,” he says finally.


End file.
